Diet Breaks: Magic of the Maintenance Calories
I want to roughly describe some stats. I don’t have the specific study links but email me and I can dig them up if you really want.
First is that the majority of people are able to lose weight when they make a concerted effort to. Over 60% of people who attempt to are able to lose a significant amount of weight. The problem is that over 90% of those people will gain the weight back and sometimes more.
To this I raise the 3 most common problems with the typical weight loss model
1) It’s not a lifestyle diet – it’s just temporary
2) If it doesn’t include exercise, it’s just temporary
3) The individual’s body and mind get tired and hungry
I don’t want to beat up the problem with lifestyle approach today too much – if you want details on this guidance, I have other blogs on the subject, but particularly look up Process Is the Result.
I want to draw your attention to point 3 and we will discuss just a little bit of the lifestyle part.
Let’s say you’re in a diet and you want to lose 20 lbs
I would ballpark that a person could do this in 20 weeks very safely. It could be quicker if they were bigger and had a bigger impact to be made in their fitness and nutrition, but for an average sized person that is already training and eating decently healthy – 1 lb per week is the appropriate pace.
This is a long period of time – the good thing is that you REALLY know this diet, so it should be a part of your life. The hard part is… well there’s a ton of hard parts. You’re always in a deficit, you’ll feel hungry, mentally deprived, experience less recovery, over time you could see strength decrease, you will miss out on many social occasions, and could very likely see muscle loss.
This isn’t selling the appeal of a diet at all, I know, but with an appropriate diet these should be on a micro level of the experience, meaning that you may feel slightly hungry, deprived and not full, etc. But these micro traumas add up to make someone quite miserable.
Not to mention that you could see a metabolic shift, because your body tries to adapt to this new level of calorie intake so you could end up reducing your energy from the day (known as NEAT or non-exercise activity thermogenesis) and/or you could lose muscle mass that’s a direct correlation to your basal metabolic rate (calories you burn to just exist).
So now that I’ve painted you a darker picture on this discouraging haul, let’s add some bright colours with the Diet Break. This is indeed a fancy term for having maintenance calories over an extended period.
There was a great research article known as the MATADOR (Minimizing Adaptive Thermogenesis And Deactivating Obesity Rebound) study that really rocked the diet world.
Here’s a rough explanation of it:
- 51 Men randomized in 2 Groups
- Group 1 – 16 weeks of continuous deficit
- Group 2 – 32 weeks of intermittent dieting - 2 weeks of deficit, 2 weeks in maintenance calories
- Findings
o Greater fat mass loss for group 2
o Better follow up to maintaining the fat mass loss in group 2
Now this is one study and it hasn’t been successfully replicated (which is an important thing to determine proof), but it’s an extremely good lesson for us to explore.
There’s certainly a draw back from doing a weight loss program twice as long, but what about doing a 3:1 ratio? This is what I encourage my clients do to.
The insight that so many miss is that you need to maintain so much of the habits you have during the deficit but just slightly shift the calories to being in a maintenance. Practice this and you will improve your metabolism because you have more energy, better recovery and recognize the diet you’ll need to practice when you really love your physique and want to keep it where it’s at.
Example:
- Individual that weights about 150lbs would need about 2000 calories
- The deficit for this person could be around 1500-1600 calories, and do this for 3-4 weeks
- They would do 1 week of 2000 calories every 4 weeks
- Following week they go back to the deficit if they still want to lose weight
- Repeat this cycle until they achieve their ideal physique
There is also something the study can’t really describe here but I have to speak about anecdotally. Maintenance calorie tracking as a practice is so F#@$ing valuable.
If you’re someone who’s had a hard time with weight going up and down, this is important to admit – you don’t know the right amount to eat that will lead to no change.
You eventually need this skill after you lose your weight, right?
I call it a skill because I also believe in having the ability to eventually eat intuitively, but you need to recognize what the right amount of food is first.
We are good at giving a shit or not giving a shit. This is the yo-yo cycle.
Every 4th week, practice the right amount of shits given. This is called balancing. Guess what, it’s actually not that easy if you’ve never done it!
How many times have you gotten a better physique and then 4 weeks later you’re like “WTF! Where did it go?”
I can tell you it’s been a monumental lesson for me, and all I’m suggesting is that you tack on maybe 6-7 more weeks instead of just the 20-weeks. Is that so bad if you kept it long term?
Use this during a week you want to destroy some new heavy weights in the gym knowing that you’ll recover better, or use it when it’s the holidays because you aim for a calorie balance!
This makes all those nagging feelings disappear for that week.
Think about it like this… would you rather run 20 straight miles? Or run 3 miles, then walk 1 and repeat that until you reach 27? Regardless of whether you like running or not, wouldn’t you agree the miles wouldn’t be nearly as hard with the second approach?
Use the sprint/walk analogy, and it really gives you an idea about how a diet break can help you “catch your breath” when you’re pushing hard toward a diet goal.
But hop right back on it and keep chipping away, and be in this for the long haul.